It is well known, in the mass production of articles, to examine some or all of the articles produced to insure that the manufacturing process is working correctly to turn out items of the right shape and size, and to sense trends in changes that reveal processing errors and the need to make adjustments. The inspection is normally accomplished by holding the article in a fixture and measuring a plurality of dimensions of the article with respect to pre-established datum planes. The measurement may be made by conventional instruments such as dial gages, optical instruments and the like. The measurements are generally compiled and compared to standards manually and consequently the procedure is so slow that only a small percentage of the manufactured parts can be checked. More recently, computer vision systems have been employed to measure part dimensions. These are relatively expensive and complex systems requiring computer control, but have the ability to inspect parts quickly enough to gage all parts manufactured.